My Republican National Committee Membership Card

came in the mail this week! It was unsolicited, but Marc Racicot, Chairman of the RNC warns me in the letter that accompanied my blue and gold card that my "decision whether or not to accept your Membership Card will directly affect the future of our country." As I toss the card into my waste bin I can only hope that Mr. Racicot is correct. He went on in his letter to tell me that if I accept the card I will "be showing people in your (my) area you support President George W. Bush and his principled, positive agenda for America." Well, I sure wouldn't want anyone around here getting that idea.

I'm sure our President loves our country and means well but as the months go by I find myself disagreeing with him on more of his principles and actions. I think he has squandered the goodwill of our allies by taking the anti-terrorism war off target by trying to use it as an opportunity to wipe out Saddam, something he had decided to do long before Sept 11th. Nothing pains me more than to be in agreement with the French - but Bush has made that viscerally unpleasant position unavoidable for me. While the French are in opposition to a preemptive attack on Iraq for all the wrong reasons (mainly just to be irritating), their conclusion is correct.

While I believe that business is the second best thing (after democracy) that ever happened to America, I think his tax cuts are so obviously overloaded toward the rich its shameful. His tax cuts will put us so far in debt again that Bill Clinton will have to be brought back to clear the accounts again. Isn't it odd how Reagan and Bush II put us in debt and Clinton put us in the black? Not what you'd expect.

And his Texas-isms just make my skin crawl like a juiced-up sidewinder. His simple, bumbling, cowboy cliches are embarrassing. I long for the articulate wisdom of Kennedy, Clinton, and even Reagan and Ford. You don't have to talk like the "common man" to be plain spoken. I don't want the one extraordinary person we pick to be our President, from among our 230-million citizens, to have the mind and tongue of the common man. But that's what we did.